


A Quiet Place

by Gotcocomilk



Category: Bleach, Noblesse (Manhwa)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Devotion, I can't be the only one who saw the similarities, Loyalty, M/M, Yes this is Frankenstein!Kisuke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24389242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gotcocomilk/pseuds/Gotcocomilk
Summary: Kisuke had spent centuries searching for his master. He had combed through countries and continents, searched every corner of the world he could reach. There had been nothing. No trace of the Noblesse could be found, and no hints of his power were left in the world but one.So Kisuke had spun threads through the world, and waited for Ichigo to return.He hadn't expected Ichigo to findhim.
Relationships: Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke
Comments: 36
Kudos: 335
Collections: UraIchi Week 2020





	A Quiet Place

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't get Noblesse!Ichigo out of my head, RIP all of us. Not really any spoilers for Noblesse beyond the existence of the Noblesse.

The shop was a quiet place, tucked away into the corners of Tokyo. It was unimportant, for all that it served the best ramen in three districts. It was unnoticed, for all that it was warm and comfortable.

It was unimportant, to all but a select few. To those few, there was a dangerous man lingering in the corners of the shop and smiling under a striped hat. To those few, the shop was the safest place in all of Tokyo.

To those few, it was never quiet but loud, filled with the sounds of invention and mystery. A cat perched on one of the walls, always seen but never touched. A cane leaned against the wall too, plain and unassuming to all but the few.

Those few gave it the space it deserved, for its hunger and the screaming.

The shop was a quiet place, until it wasn’t.

Kisuke didn’t gasp, when Ichigo walked through the door. He didn’t run or hide, and didn’t drop the cup in his fingers to shatter across the ground. He’d faced far too many battles to have unsteady nerves, even now.

Kisuke didn’t gasp, but he did fall to his knees for the one man he would always bow before. He hadn’t thought to hope, even as he’d planned for this return.

He hadn’t dared to hope.

“Mas—”

There was a scowl and a cough, sharp as a blade to the gut. It caught Kisuke between a glare and the floor, where bright eyes burned his skin and brighter words burned the quiet away.

“I told you not to call me that,” the man he had waited ten lifetimes for said, stare digging into Kisuke’s skin and coring him open.

Ichigo had always seen to the core of him, with eyes the color of dried blood and a soul brighter than the sun. Even bleeding and desperate, Kisuke had understood that Ichigo would know him as no one else had.

It was unnerving. It was painful. It was beautiful, in a way Kisuke only ever allowed from Ichigo.

Kisuke had always been a man of endless invention. When he had been human, standing between his village and the overwhelming force of the nobles, that invention had been a shield. When he had been wholly human, Kisuke had needed it.

He didn’t need it now, but it was still whirling in the back of his mind, endless. He had always been good at picking the universe to pieces and finding its secrets, and a thousand years ago he had turned that power to Ichigo and found—

Nothing. Ichigo couldn’t be explained. There was no answer to the strength of the man’s blood and the tide of his conviction. There was no answer to Ichigo’s kindness in the face of loss, to the overwhelming power that nothing could match.

There was nothing that could explain Ichigo. That had been true eight hundred years ago, when Kisuke knelt in an empty mansion and swore an oath.It was true now, when he knelt on the ground of his own shop.

Kisuke had always been too clever for his own good. But that was fine. Now he could be clever for Ichigo’s good instead, as he had for the last thousand years.He smiled, and it was too honest and made only for Ichigo. The cat on the sill shifted and twitched, her version of a laugh. Kisuke ignored it.

“Did your vacation go well, Ichigo?”

“Slept too much,” Ichigo replied, the first hints of a grin growing sharp on his face. Those eyes were still bright with power, but they had grown soft too. Kisuke’s heart jumped a beat, at that.

“Still a little stiff.”

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Later, when Yoruichi had leapt from the wall and paid her respects, when the shop was closed and the quiet had been washed away by conversation, Ichigo spoke.

“You became a shopkeeper, huh? It suits you. You always did love swindling people out of things.”

“Why, Ichigo, I don’t know what you mean!” Kisuke smiled, fingers itching to snap out a fan and hide behind it. It had been a long time since someone had stared through him so clearly, and he wasn’t used to it.

But this was Ichigo. This was the man who had protected Kisuke and given him a home and family. This was the man who Kisuke had given his everything to, all those long years ago.

So he laughed instead, sly grin a mask all its own. He didn’t hide, even as Ichigo snorted at his smile. He slid a bowl of ramen before Ichigo, watched warm eyes go wide and wondrous.

“What the hell is this, Kisuke? Is this garlic? Are these _stakes?_ ”

Nothing could stop the laughter now, not when Ichigo’s expression was something Kisuke had wanted to see for centuries.

The shop would never be quiet again.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

“I couldn’t find you,” he said days later, a low confession to a proud god. It was quiet, in the silence of a home he had lingered in for so long. Even Yoruichi wasn’t here now, out to begin a decade trip across the world. Those trips had always left him lonely and listless in the past, leaving him too long to invent and too long to think. 

But Kisuke wasn’t alone anymore, and he wasn’t lonely.

Ichigo only sighed, turning to stare at him with eyes like fire and thunder. Warm fingers hauled him close, curling across the back of his neck and pressing Kisuke's lips to Ichigo’s throat.The skin there was warm. It was comforting too, humming with a power that Kisuke felt resonate in his bones and blood. He held a small piece of that power, tied into the cracks of his soul.

He was Ichigo’s, and that meant they couldn’t die apart. It meant Kisuke had known he was alive for eight hundred years.

It meant everything.

“Stop blaming yourself, Kisuke. Just because you think you’re at fault doesn’t mean you are.”

The words brushed across his hair, moved the skin beneath his lips. They were strong with a conviction that was unshakable, even eight hundred years later. Ichigo could destroy the world with a single hand, if he wanted to. The fight that had drained Ichigo enough to force him into sleep, it must have been massive. It could have only been against one man, with wolves at his side and a power to match Ichigo’s.

It could only have been Starrk, but Kisuke didn’t know why two friends would raise their hands against each other. It didn’t matter, in the end. Kisuke would do everything in his power to ensure Ichigo never had to raise a finger again.

He would protect his master, if it took every shard of his intelligence and every soul that hummed in Benihime.

“Ah, but Ichigo,” he whispered into the warm skin before him. It felt like everything he had missed, in the long centuries of planning. “I’m so very good at it.”

“Dumbass,” the man muttered into his hair, and it sounded far too fond.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Ichigo settled into the daily life of the ramen shop like a fish to water. There was a light ease to every motion the man made, when he balanced bowls and handled sharp knives. His hands were steadier, happier, when they carried out food orders instead of executions. Kisuke just watched him sometimes, in the long hour after the shop shut its curtains. He watched warm eyes go soft, watched the quiet contentment that settled across Ichigo’s skin.

If he didn’t know better, he would think the man had never borne the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Kisuke would carry that weight himself, if only to for Ichigo.

He moved to stand, reaching for a broom in the corner. The shop had to be clean before tomorrow, and Kisuke couldn’t spend all his time staring at Ichigo.

There would be time for that later, anyway.

But the broom was out of his hands before he could think to move it, Ichigo’s fingers lightning quick and stronger than Kisuke’s loose grip.

“Ichigo—“ he began, the old worship creeping up his spine. Ichigo had never stood on ceremony, not like the other nobles. The years in the manor were spent in companionship, not servitude, and Ichigo had never treated him as anything but an equal for all that they could never be equal.

But Kisuke still couldn’t let the Noblesse sweep his floor. He couldn’t let Ichigo _clean his floor_.

The man shot him a glare, bright and furious.

“Shut up. I’m going to help clean.”

And so he did, sweeping away Kisuke’s worries along with the dust. Ichigo swept a family together in the next few months too, with strong hands and sharp glares. The man had always been too good for a world that was too cold.

It was later, after an experiment with the heart of a werewolf had dropped into their lap, and a dozen new people had made a home in Kisuke’s shop, that the words came.

He was twirling his hat on a finger, watching Shinji perch across the counter like a bird of prey, and calculating the odds of the destruction of everything he loved. He was planning a thousand ways to defeat Aizen too, now that the human had shown himself to be the root of Kisuke’s problems.

He was contemplating many things, with the edge of a hat catching on his nail. Ichigo stepped forward to stand beside him, leaning against the counter and not scowling but quiet.

“Thank you,” the man said, bright eyes soft and warm in the evening light. The hat paused, caught on the edge of short nail and frozen in time. Kisuke didn’t spin it again.

“Why Ichigo, you’ll need to be more specific. What are you thanking me for today?”

“You built this place for me, didn’t you,” Ichigo said, voice quiet over the smell of warm broth and garlic.It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t something Ichigo needed to ask. Kisuke did everything for Ichigo, and they both knew that. There was a bond between them, and for all that Ichigo wouldn’t let Kisuke call him master, Kisuke had only ever served one man.

He smiled as he slipped his hat back on, felt the shadows catch across his eyes again. Benihime was whispering a quite melody in his soul, but Ichigo’s fire burned brighter.

Kisuke didn’t have to be alone again.

“I’m sure you don’t need a shop like this, Ichigo,” he said, over the sound of low shrieks and Shinji’s sharp glares.

“Sure, Kisuke. I believe that.” Long fingers caught his as he moved, running across his skin until they found his hat. Ichigo was so warm. Kisuke was going to shake to pieces, under that warmth.

“Come on now, Ichigo. Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?”

The answer was yes, a thousand times over. The answer was yes, in corpses and experiments and the sharp edges of Kisuke’s soul.

The answer was yes for anyone else, but for Ichigo, it could only ever be a no.

“I don’t give a damn if there are reasons to doubt you. I chose to trust you a thousand years ago, and I’d make the same choice now. So shut up, Kisuke, and stop hiding under that hat.”

Kisuke smiled, and let his fingers go loose and playful. Ichigo took the hat from him and pulled it away, a broad hand moving up to press into his hair.

It was so warm.

Kisuke leaned into it for a heartbeat, even as the shadows burned away from his face. It felt like they were back in a time before that long sleep, before Ichigo had vanished and the world had grown darker. It felt like Kisuke could breath again.

It felt like Ichigo, and somehow Kisuke knew the shop would never be quiet again.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hit me up on [my server](https://discord.gg/7tn2ywb) for prompts and general tomfoolery, and my [twitter](https://twitter.com/gotcocomilk) or [tumblr](https://thehoardofthegreatdragon.tumblr.com) for stupidity. 
> 
> I love hear if I wrote a particularly captivating or interesting line-- feel free to include it in a comment to feed your friendly neighborhood writing monster.


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